CMAM :: Center of Arab and Meditarranean Music

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	A space devoted to memory

	The Legal Deposit of Sound Recordings

	Presentation

	Legal texts

	Form

	Collecting campaigns

	Release of audio recordings

	The holdings

	Listening samples

	Record sleeves

The holdings

There are approximately 10 000 titles in the musical recordings holdings conserved at present in the Tunisian National Sound Archive.

The holdings can be broken up according to the provenance of the recordings:

Legal deposit : about 3800 titles

Donations: 2200 titles

Collected music around the country: more than 1000 recordings

Recordings made by the CAMM: more than 1000 recordings

Recordings handed over by other institutions: 958, (the majority of which were conserved by the Tunis Higher Institute of Music).

Acquisition 1650 titles.

The holding contains the following formats: 78 rpm double sided records/ vinyl 33 and 45 rpm records / cassette tapes/DAT/CDA/DVD/video tapes/magnetic tapes.

The National Sound Archive’s holdings consist of recordings from various geographical origins including, Tunisia, the Maghreb, non Maghrebi Arab, Mediterranean and various others.

The Tunisian National Sound Archive has expanded its holding with the addition of a few collections from individual donors. These include:

- The personal collection of Dr Salah El Mehdi, an outstanding figure on the Tunisian musical scene throughout the twentieth century. This collection contains 1460 records of Arab, oriental and western music in different formats (LP records, singles and a few 78’s).

- The collection, containing 33 records in different formats, passed on by the children of the late Ugo Scialom should also be mentioned.

The CAMM encourages people with collections of musical sound recordings to donate them to the National Sound Archive. Any recordings on records, tape and cassettes; audiovisual documents with a historical value; publications (books, monographs, reference books and theses) devoted to music; any object (sound reproducing equipment, posters, curiosities) will be gladly accepted by the Sound Archive on the understanding that the physical integrity of all collections donated will be preserved.

The name of the donor figures on each object. It figures in the database of audio recordings in the case of musical sound recordings. In addition, a plaque indicating the content of the donation as well as the name of the donor is clearly posted in the sound archive.( if you want to contribute to the enriching of the sound archive holdings, please send us an email).

At the same time as the recordings produced by the centre and legal deposit, the donations and acquisitions policy initiated by the National Sound Archive has also enhanced the archive’s collections. The library has also inherited the collection belonging to the Higher Institute of Music.